Antic Dispositions
by The Smiling Shadow
Summary: It was Hamlet who put on an "antic disposition" to fool the evil king that he was mad. The former Doctors of Arkham Asylum, Crane and Quinzel, put on their own antic dispositions trying to fool themselves. They come together to free each other.
1. Never Talk to Crane

"You're like me, aren't you?"

He told her, just before they came, just before they got separated being put into separate cars, never talk to him.

"Hey. You're very pretty."

Never look at him. Never talk to him.

"Does he ever call you pretty?"

As they tore them apart, he called out to her, never speak to Jonathan Crane.

"But it's not because of your body. No. I see it, in your eyes, a brilliant mind, there in your eyes. It is beautiful."

She turns to him, through the little cracks in their walls, she can see him, and he can see her.

An hour ago she had on white make up trying her hardest to be like him. She had black lips and black eyes, smeared across her face as the scars smeared his. An hour ago she was free, she was with him, and they were running on rooftops, stolen money flying out of their pockets, a gun in her hand, a knife in his. An hour ago, she was the happiest she had ever been. He was laughing that wonderful laugh, he was holding her hand, leading her into the night.

"Not that your body isn't beautiful as well." He coughs.

An hour ago the Batman came, and he just lit up and tried to hug the vigilante. An hour ago they fought and played together, and the Batman took them home. And just as the cops were tearing them apart, as they were dragging him away from her, he yelled at her, "Never talk to Jonathan Crane!"

She turned to see Crane through the cracks in their walls. His glasses reflected the moonlight, as if they were his very eyes, lifeless, merciless. But he drew away from the cracks and she could see his form as he stood, thin, lankly, harmless. He was so small as he stood it seemed a gust of wind could take him away, a little push would have shattered him.

She had heard of Crane long before her days of crime. As a psychology student she had heard what he had done to his own students, pointing a gun at them, scaring them to prove a point. She never deciphered what that point was, people didn't seem to care about it when recollecting the story to her. But it was the most important thing, was the point worth it? Did it come across? She wondered what fear meant to him, but she was too much of a coward to pursue it herself. No, her destiny she felt would be less ambitious, she'd live her life, helping the mentally unstable, nothing too out of the ordinary.

Nothing like him.

"My name is Jonathan Crane." He tells her. "My friends call me Scarecrow."

"That's impossible." She turns away. "You have no friends."

She chuckles to herself, a joke, he'd be proud. But Crane doesn't laugh. He stares through the cracks, his lanky frame about to break under itself. He coughs again, pushes up his glasses.

"Well, if you call me Scarecrow, then my friends really will call me Scarecrow." He tells her.

He pushes up his glasses once more.

"Damn it, they took away my contacts." He sighs.

She tries to ignore him then. She thinks only of him, the Joker who only laughed when they came for them, who only spat in their faces as they put the straight jacket on him, who only smiled as they dragged her away. Don't worry, Harley, he had said, just some time to take a rest.

Then he said never speak to Jonathan Crane. But he creeps closer to the wall, she can feel his eyes staring at her, her shape silhouetted in the moonlight. She feared he'd stare at her all night, she'd go to bed and he'd watch her sleep, and he'd be there when she awoke.

She thinks of the Joker, how unafraid he was of this place. But he doesn't know it like she does. He doesn't know what the doctors say once the patients are gone, what they think of them.

"Please talk to me." He asks her. "Please. There is a lack of good conversation, as you can imagine. You cannot discuss the fallacies of human assumptions with a madman, you know."

She sees the Joker in her mind's eye, that wonderful smile, so fearless, so brave, so confident. Everything she wasn't, everything she wanted to be.

"You're like me." He tells her.

"What are you?" She asks.

"Sane."

She turns to him.

"We are sane." He nods. "We just decided to play their game, because, I suppose, it makes sense to be crazy in a crazy world."

He puts his fingers to the cracks, trying to reach through them.

"The entire world is an Asylum, this one is no different than the one outside of it. You and I know this, but the people who deny it call us as mad as everyone else in here."

He shakes his head.

"I'm not mad. I've just seen the wisdom of the madman, just as you have." His eyes move in the night. "Just as you've fallen in love with him."

She suddenly turns to him, her hair flying through her shoulders. He smiles at the strong reaction, mistaking it for a sign of affectionate curiosity.

"Please. Talk to me." He says so desperately, so meekly. "My name is Jonathan Crane, my friends call me Scarecrow."

She thinks of Joker. She imagines his voice ringing through the walls. She knows what they're doing with him then and there. She knows what the doctors think. He's deep in the secret rooms Crane made himself, trying to get tortured out of his madness. But he's strong, and he laughs at them, he always laugh.

So she laughs.

Deep and low she laughs. Then she creeps up towards him, laughing louder, and louder still. He backs away from the wall but she presses her forehead against the concrete, her eyes piercing through his pale and thin skin.

"You wanna talk?" She mocks. "Fine. We can talk. Already I can diagnose you ten different ways, and give you twenty different drugs, that together could finally calm you down long enough for you to maybe resemble something normal and let you gain some friends. But I bet you've thought of that already. I bet you've taken all the drugs you prescribed for yourself, so afraid, afraid you were becoming like them. Then that fear took you over, and now that's all you can see, and the only way to survive is inflict it on other people. You're not sane, you just like to think you are."

She laughs. That psychology degree never going to waste.

"And what of you!?" he screams back at her. "Falling in love with a homicidal maniac, a terrorist. Can you even see it?"

"See what?"

"The blood on his hands! He's killed children! Mutilated women! Mercilessly and without second-thought. He'd kill you too if you gave him the opportunity! You want to be free like him, but you're not damaged enough yet, so you let him beat you, you let him rape you, and you wait for that --"

"HE HASN'T TOUCHED ME!"

He can see her furious eyes through her golden hair, shining. She could have killed him with her stare alone, her fists could have crushed him, her hands choked the life out of him. He was a skinny thing compared to even her, barely any flesh over his bones, like he could have blown away in the wind. She stares at him through the crack, wanting nothing more but to kill him. The months she'd spent learning how to take a life, learning how life is worthless, she could do it, she felt, and she'd make the Joker proud.

"Don't you think I know he doesn't give a shit about me!?" She screams through the crack. "Don't you think I know what he's done!? That all that blood is on me now too!? It's too late to go back, Jonathan Crane, you know that!"

Her eyes make him speechless, she steals his voice. He's left to surrender to her attacking words that stab him like the high school children that had posted him to a stick and left him in a cornfield. She reminds him briefly of the cheerleader from all those years ago, he had stared at her apparently too long, and she had instructed her football playing lackeys to put him on that stick and let him hang all night. He remembers how beautiful her hair was, golden like Miss Quinzel's. How horrible her faced looked when she screamed to get his slimey hands off of her. How furious she was, and how vile she was laughing at him as he kicked away at the stick he hung upon. He remembers how wonderful it felt to strangle her in the middle of that cornfield, dressed in that awful scarecrow outfit they'd put him in. He remembers how beautiful her scream was, how soothing it sounded to him to know that he had hurt her in ways she could never hurt him.

Harleen Quinzel had stopped her screaming, she pulled off her shirt and stuffed it into the crack so he could no longer see her. She strutted around her cell, going over the past few months in her mind, trying desperately to rationally think irrationally. Often times she'd stop because the psychologist in her would mock her for her folly. She would tell herself she knows better. But then her heart would sing, and say it knows best, better than all degrees and all schooling. She loved him, that was that, and she wanted only to be like him.

"Harley?" Jonathan Crane's muffled cry slips through the cloth blocking them. "Miss Quinzel, I'm sorry." He puts his head to the wall. "Really, I am, I had no right to say that. I just was overwhelmed, overjoyed you were beside me in this asylum."

But she doesn't listen, she goes to bed, thinking of her Joker. Jonathan Crane doesn't stop all night. He whispers sweet nothings into the room even as she slept, pleading for her forgiveness, trying to explain himself.

That morning guards came in for routinely inspection. Jonathan Crane was awoken by the screams of his new neighbor. The guards had grown violent and touch in Arkham, as they rightfully should, the weak easily perished in the madness held by those walls. But she was not expecting it. They came in, banging the wall to scare her into the corner like an animal. They grabbed her and looked at her exposed body, screaming why would she do such a stupid thing as take off her shirt. She punches one, and the other chokes her into the wall with his knife stick. They mock her, they mock her Joker. You and that clown, they say, you're nothing, but freaks. She recites for them tales of anarchy, she explains the only way to live in this world is as a freak. She repeats the Joker's teachings, and they beat her for it.

"Hey, stop it!"

Came the small voice of Jonathan Crane.

"There's no need for that with her." He explains as the guards come out to stand before his cell.

"Oh, yeah? You would know, wouldn't you, Doc?" The guard slams the knife stick at Crane's bars.

"How's your daughter, Officer Barkley? Has she come home yet from running off with that bastard child from down the street?"

Crane smiles a numb and dull smile, the guard, Barkley, stares down at him in shock.

"How did you know that?" The guard asks.

"It is my job to know what a man fears most. And I hear you praying to a God that doesn't seem to be there for your baby girl to come back home, but she hasn't. Aw, how sad. She's gotten lost in a big town like this."

"Shut up."

"Maybe if you didn't yell at her so much, she'd still be alive."

"Shut your mouth!"

"Because that's it, isn't it? She's in a dumpster somewhere, abandoned by everyone that loved her."

They hit him for a while. They beat down on his ribs and his bones, and his skin easily bruises, the frail little thing he was. He curls up in the corner, screaming at them, it must make you feel so good beating the crap out of a scarecrow like me, he laughs at them. Harley watches through the crack in their wall and she laughs too.

They can't get the two to shut up, even as they beat them. Finally the two guards retreat, time demanding that they do so.

"That's why no one wants to talk to you." She says. "You latch onto anything and twist it into fear."

"It's what I do."

They laugh through the crack in the wall.

"What a thing to live by." She says through her laughs. "Fear."

"Fear is powerful. It can inspire, it can destroy."

"So can love."

"Mmm, seems we have our areas of expertise."

"Indeed, it would seem so, Dr. Crane."

"I like that."

"What?"

"You called me Doctor, and you weren't being sarcastic."

He smiles at her through the crack, and she smiles back.

"It's a crazy world we live in, isn't it?" She sighs. "Where a man can dress like a bat and truly believe he can stop crime, and he's praised. Meanwhile you got perfectly reasonable people like you and me, thrown in here?" She laughs a little. "Have you met him?"

"Who?"

"The Bat?"

"Here and there." He nods. "You don't forget a man like that. A man so twisted and so…I don't know, I want to say dedicated."

"He and Mister J, they're two of a kind, I swear. He loves the Bat more than anything else in the world."

He sees her shrink through the crack in the wall. She doesn't frown, she still smiles, but she lets go of a heavy sigh that makes her seem that much smaller. Her eyes became sad even as she smiled as she was taught to.

"The Joker is…intriguing." He says.

"Don't try to diagnose him." She shakes her head. "The man defies all diagnosis. He's a force of nature, he's chaos incarnate, he can't be stopped by drugs, he can't be tamed by medicine." She sighs. "He's always going, and going, and going, and you can't keep up with him, but you try, that's all you can do, try. His is a madness undefined, perhaps it's sanity." she shrugs.

He stares at her, and sees the familiar face of a woman thinking about another man. She lifts her head with a laugh, as if recalling a distant moment in her past where she was with the Joker in a moment of perhaps sincere bonding.

"Why do you love him?" He asks her. "Despite everything. I see your guilt. I see your fear."

She looks up, suddenly with those horrible piercing eyes that could kill him. She goes on the defensive again.

"I know, you're afraid that you'll never be like him." He tells her, shaking his head, and the eyes turn away.

"I think deep down, I always hated authority. I hated school, I hated my parents, all I wanted to do after high school was disappear. I wanted to turn into vapor and end myself, just so I wouldn't have to carry myself through more schooling. I…I was in a state of such hopelessness because of what society was forcing me into, and all I saw around me were these equally hopeless people, just going through the motions of living. We're all dead, Dr. Crane, we're all dying, but he's actually alive. And living in such a world where everyone around you is dead, he doesn't value their lives." She shakes her head. "Still, sometimes hard to shake off a night of 'happy-fun-family-murder-time.'"

She wipes the hair out of her eyes, he wants to do it for her.

"I just want to feel, like I can do whatever I want. Like I'm free from everything everyone expects of me. That's why he has no name. That's why he burned his fingerprints off and filed down his teeth, and pokes himself in the eyes, just so there's no remarkable trace left of what he was and who he was. The name carries expectations, he had a human name and he had human responsibilities to the world. Now he's just the Joker, he has no purpose, no meaning, he's so free and so happy…"

"Harley…"

She looks up.

"I hope you do become like him. For your own sake."

That night he sat on the floor beside the cracked wall, and she on the other side of the wall. They listened to all the screams that echoed in the asylum. He identifies each person accordingly with their cry, and together they diagnose the mad and write up perscriptions in their heads that should help them fit into normalcy. They argue about the best way to treat some patients. Finally she falls asleep around three am, exhausted. He cries out her name, wanting her to wake, but she doesn't. He thinks of how young and pretty she is, so much younger than he.

She made him question why he's alive. It seems all she wants is to live a meaningful life without meaning. He lays beside her, a wall between them, wondering what is it that he lives for.

He had a mother somewhere, didn't know if she was still alive. The father was dead and in the ground, he was dead the year he graduated high school, the year he was dressed up as a scarecrow and hung to protect the corn.

He falls asleep too.

"NO! DON'T LEAVE ME! YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME IN HERE! NOT IN HERE! JOKER!!!"

He jumps to the sound of her screaming voice. He gets up and sees through the crack Harleen Quinzel on the wall, hanging to the bars of her window, screaming into the night. He can hear police sirens, he can hear gunfire.

"JOKER!!!" She's crying. "WHAT ABOUT ME!? PLEASE! DON'T LEAVE ME HERE!!!"

The Joker was escaping. A bomb went off that shook the asylum. It knocked her off the wall, threw her to the floor where she was still crying.

"Harley?" Jonathan Crane asks.

But she can't hear his quiet voice. Not with the sirens screaming for her Joker, not for the gunfire aimed at him. The escape alarm sounds. Joker's gone, he outside running, escaping, and he's leaving without her.

Jonathan Crane watches as Harley hits her fist on the floor and cries.

----------------

Next Chapter coming soon.

Please R/R


	2. Little Blue Flower

She wouldn't stop crying. She stayed on her bed, her back to him, her head in the corner, her golden hair draped over her face and tears. He watched her, and at that point she didn't care. He watched the shoulder blades rise and fall, her skin showing through that tattered shirt. She banged her forehead on the concrete wall, and he would've sworn she was going to make her head start bleeding if she continued.

She had been abandoned, left behind by the man who had somehow managed to steal her heart while he was out stealing mob money. He was driving her insane, Crane could see that, but not in any of the ways she wanted. She was becoming obsessive and dependent, something great minds like her should never be. But he didn't say anything, he figured she already knew.

She even cried in her sleep, when she'd become so exhausted she couldn't keep her eyes open, but the tears continued. She was younger than him, by a few years, enough to make a difference. Her mind was brilliant, he knew that, but also very young. He figured she was a woman who had stayed in control in her relationships. When the relationships were broken they were broken by her. She had never fallen in love like this before, she had never had such heartache before that she could have learned from. He on the other hand, had a strong resistance to such pains. He had over the years built up an immunity to abandonment, he expected to be left alone, he had grown accustomed.

She was so beautiful, she must've grabbed any man she wanted. They must've worshipped her, done anything she wanted. And she had the mind to understand them, to control them. That's what she was, a woman always in control. But she had given that all up and now she was alone and the one man she wanted more than anything else could have cared less about her. Joker didn't concern himself with his company, he didn't think about women, or love, or anything like that. Joker had bats in his brains and that was all, Crane hadn't even met the Joker in person but he had gathered that much. It was that obvious, anyone could see it they just had to look. Joker wore his mind like a coat, he wanted the world to see it, to gawk at it, and never be able to comprehend it. What could happen to a man that could make him forget a woman like Harleen Quinzel, he didn't know.

He watched her closely, and on the third straight day of her crying, he could take it no longer. He recognized so well the familiar scars of her tears, he remembered the night he had spent crying in his bed, long ago when the kids would call him Scarecrow and the girl he loved would only laugh at him.

"Don't worry, Harley." Crane said through the crack. "I'll get you out of here."

He had convinced his old colleagues, and now his doctors, that a plant was a merciful gift in a place so dreary. He smiled on that day he walked into their office. He wore the white coats all the crazy people did, but he pushed up his glasses and seemed to them so small and fragile, skin on bone, a scarecrow. He had them talking like the old days.

Funny thing he had observed, the so called sane people were nothing of the sort. They were as predictable and easily figured out as the insane, perhaps even more so. He thought up in his mind his own little diagnosis to classify all the different sorts of sane people there were. All the years he'd spent at Arkham as their "friend," all the discussions about the crazies, all the diagnosis, all the decided treatments. Sometimes they all went out to lunch and talked about the normal and usual things that sane peopled talked about. He had discovered their fears by the way they avoided subjects and how their voices changed at the mention of some subtle to the world but deep in their souls. His old friends, he came to them, and laughed a little at himself.

"I'm sorry." He said to them. "You must think such awful things of me."

"What you did, John, is unforgivable." They all said in various ways.

And then he put on this look of such utter regret, such sadness and despair that he had worn in his real life years ago. He drifted to the open window, to the sun, he scraped his fingers on the glass and he sighed a horrible sigh and he shrank in front of them. He was toying with them, he had in those years become an actor. He had manipulated and acted out the fears of the insane, that he could not act to manipulate the sane.

"I didn't know." He said with a slight quiver in his voice. "I didn't know what they were going to do with it."

His poisons, his fear gases.

"You were using our patients, Crane!" They say in their various ways. "Remember the oath? 'Do no harm?' What were you doing!?"

"I was helping them!" Then he shakes his head. He cries out and wipes his eyes. "Oh, God." he doesn't really believe in God. "I need help."

They stare with their sad eyes, their old friend, the one they had shared so many coffees with.

"I keep hearing them screaming!" He yells at them. "At night, they're all screaming and I can't get them out of my head!"

By the end of their session they had decided that their old friend was hurting, but he was curable. They had been convinced the crimes he did were not of his own understanding, and that he himself had fallen victim to his drug and madness. They wanted to help him most of all. They allowed him one tiny mercy.

A flower, he suggested, his favorite flower. A rare thing, grown only in the mountains of Asia, but he had a garden full at home. They brought him a little pot of one little blue flower.

It was this flower that sat at his barred window where it could gather sun. He grabbed it then that night, his beautiful blue little flower. He could hear her crying still. He emptied the pot and uprooted the flower. He took a rock and began beating the petals into watery powder. He mixed it every so slightly and reached into the toilet where under the bowl he had hidden a fine chemical that he had swallowed and thrown up in a fine plastic capsule. He mixed it with the powder and it began to smoke and sizzle.

A guard who feared contracting a tapeworm that would eat away at his brain passed by an hour later. He was all in all a good man. Crane put his face between the bars, and stopped him as he passed by, the keys to the cells by his belt.

"I'm sorry to bother you." He told the guard. "But the woman next door, something's wrong, she hasn't stopped crying."

"That's Harleen Quinzel, Mr. Crane." The guard says. "She'll get over it soon enough."

"Quinzel? Really?"

"Yeah."

"Wow…Hey, there's a crack in my wall, I can see right through it, do you think they could patch it up, doesn't seem right peeping into a crying girl's room."

"Where?"

"Here, closer, it's right there."

He points to the crack, the guard leans down, he grabs the guard's face, rubbing that chemical all over, making him eat it, breath it, fear it. The guard pushes him away, but Crane grabs his belt and holds him close to the bars. The man starts to feel worms in his body, his legs give out, his arms flail at nothing. Crane fits his skinny arms through the bars and grabs the keys, walking out of his cell. He drags the guard into his cell, putting him on the bed, wrapping him up good and tight so he doesn't fall over and hurt himself.

Scarecrow walks next door, opening it. Harley Quinn looks over through her tears. She immediately stopped crying.

In moments they're running down the halls, down the stairs, where the crazies watch and laugh as they go by. He turned left, she turned right. She looked back at him with this evil smile she must have learned from Joker.

"I can't go out like this." She smiled and swayed her hips. "I don't have my face on, and I'm entirely dressed wrong."

She lead him down to the Criminal Possessions room. She kicked the door down with ease, and walked in like she owned the place. She smashed open her drawer and grabbed out that red and black hat that she loved to wear. He saw her putting it on and felt this was a good chance to get some of what he lost as well. He ran over to find his name where his suit had been placed, beneath it the gas canisters, and beneath that his face. He pulled off his tattered shirt, hearing a giggle from Harley. He looked over at her, his concave chest bare, his ribs clearly outlined in his thin layer of skin. He pushed up his glasses and started buttoning his collar shirt. He hid behind a desk to put on his nice pants and nice shoes.

The next time he looked over at her his mouth dropped. She had taken off her shirt, wearing now only a black bra and red and black diamond pants. Her hips stuck out, her body twisted, she was absolutely the most gorgeous thing he'd seen his life since high school. She was pulling up her hair into a bun. She didn't even have to look at him, she shifted her weight onto another leg, swaying her hips.

"You're staring." She said.

She didn't sound like she was forbidding it, she didn't sound like she was approving it either. She just said a simple fact, that he was staring. Despite her apathetic meaning, he immediately turned away, grabbing his canisters and securing him on his wrist.

But his eyes moved back to her, she was so slow in putting on the rest of his outfit that he felt maybe she wanted him to look. But then he realized it wasn't that, she was just so comfortable in her skin that she didn't care who saw what. She put on a corset finally, opting to carry the rest of her outfit separately. Her red and black hat covered her eyes, the two tails dangly at her pale and sharp shoulders. She was putting on black lipstick, smearing it across her cheeks like his scars smeared across his when she gasped.

"What?"

"Oh no!" She grabbed a little orange bottle. "His medicine!"

"Medicine?"

"Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no." She said strapping her boots on.

"What?"

"He's got a skin condition!" She cried out. "Pale skin, he can't be out in the sun much, and these rashes. Oh, gosh, I hope he got a new bottle." She seemed so motherly then, so worried her baby was going to get ill.

"Rashes?"

"Yes!" She yelled at him. "He's got a skin condition, okay? It's not his fault."

"It's just strange."

"What?"

"To imagine the Joker has some sort of weakness."

"It's not a weakness." She was quick to defend him. "It hurts without the medicine, but that's never stopped him before. Still." she held tightly onto the bottle.

The scars didn't end on his face. They had warehouses where he plotted, abandoned and forgotten, no one bothered them there. He had plans upon plans, stacked up against the walls for any sort of case. Months on months of planning, it never stopped. He had three plans going at once, each to be completely four months apart from each other. She can remember when the last one failed, when the Bat had given him a few new bruises, a few new scars. He had all these bruises up and down his ribs, and it was hard for him to laugh, but he did anyway, because he loved them, he loved the pain. "Love marks," he called them. He walked by her once, the scars of stabs and bullets that he probably had gotten years before he ever put on make up. He walked by at night, the one light hitting him. His skin looked white, pinkish skin in places where there were rashes. Scars never seemed to heal, wounds always bled, bruises took weeks to go away. He popped in some pills and gave her the duty to make sure he took them twice a day. I had some accidents in my past, he said, and I was always a sickly guy since.

She gripped the bottle in her hand. She remembered lying naked in their bed, the sheets tangled up in her legs. He never looked at her, he never touched her. She didn't exist to him unless she had some make up on her face like him.

That's when the alarm sounded, and they knew they were escaping. She grabbed from her drawer three metal rectangles that she quickly made into a gun.

"Let's go." she said.

He put on his face. That precious mask he had fashioned for himself years ago. That Scarecrow mask. He tightened the noose around his neck, securing it on his head. She twisted her head, the tails of her hat spinning in place of her hair. She looked at him and smiled with her black lips.

"You look silly." She said.

"You're still very pretty."

She was a warrior woman, that's what she was. She plowed through guards like they were rag dolls. They were cornered at some stairs and she kicked a man in the knee, breaking it, he grabbed his friend, and she pushed them down the stairs, and they ran into the other friends. Another guard ran at her, she kicked him in the mouth, then punched him in the throat. Another guard ran at Crane, he dodged as the guard swung at him, and Harley plowed him into her knee. Down the hall guards came, she fired her gun and shot them all in the calf. She was unstoppable. Her body twisted and turned, she did flips and crushed necks with her legs. She had grown to hurt men, but he noticed that she never killed them.

"What do you got, Slim?" She asked him.

"Scarecrow." He insisted.

"That's a silly name." She said. "What's wrong with you? You missin' a brain?"

The alarms were going off and he could barely hear her. But he knew she was making fun of him, even as he was trying to save her, she was laughing at him. The mask protected him, she couldn't see how hurt he was.

Guards were turning the corner, he pushed her aside with a thud.

"Don't breathe." He told her.

"What do you got?" She asked again.

The Guards came at him. He had the greatest weapon of all.

"FEAR!" He screamed and he held up his arms and the precious gas flew into their lungs and their brains.

He grabbed Harley's arm, and pulled her through the gas, where guards began to cough and then scream in horrible nightmares. She started laughing, but you couldn't tell between the alarm and the screaming. But Crane heard, she was laughing, laughing just like that clown.

Under the protection of the dark they made it to the outside fence, they ran out the same hole the Joker had made, and then they were free.

---------

He was back in his suit and hour later, holding his face like an extra bag he was carrying around. Unlike the Joker or Two-face he found it very easy to blend in, it also helped that when people thought of all the crazies in Arkham they managed to forget him. They had made their way to a little 50s diner late at night when only they and some other low-life folk were enjoying the taste of cheeseburgers. He stared at her from across the table, no one seemed to suspect her, she was just a beautiful lady in red and black. She was wiping off the excess lipstick so she wouldn't smear it on any of her food at the time.

"You were very impressive back there." He tells her.

"I better be." She laughs to herself. "I mean it's what I've been trained for."

"Trained?"

She smirks to herself, trying to shake it off.

"A few months ago all I had in this field was a few years of cheerleading. He hits me all the time."

He leans in closer, how many times had he'd met with young women with their abusive boyfriends and fathers, he couldn't remember.

"But he does it so I can get used to it." She shrugs. "It's a secret, but I'm his body guard. His own personally trained body guard. He'll hit me and it's my job not to be surprised, to take it, to stop it." She shrugs. "I'm getting better, that's for sure, but he teaches to fight dirty, but eh, I throw some punches."

She then smiles.

"Hey! I never thanked you. Thank you."

"Oh, yes, no problem."

He leans back in his chair, quite happy with himself.

"Now what?" he asks.

She leans forward, sipping on her milkshake the waitress just brought her.

"We do it all over again." She smiles. "That's us. We get out, we work the city, try and take it from the man who protects it, spread the wisdom of madness around. Kill people."

"That's what you do, huh?"

"Yeah, what? Don't you?"

He leans back in his chair.

"Originally I was gonna get paid then move to Europe." he shrugs.

"Heh. You really are something, you know that? One of a kind."

"Why? Just because I don't obsess about a man dressed up as a bat?"

"Yeah."

Her lips playfully smile through the straw of her milkshake. She looks up with a warm smile and beautiful blue eyes.

"Well, he's simple in my book. He's downright crazy. He thinks he can stop crime, he's a madness more akin to a cancer. His presence attracts more madness and more chaos, your Mr. J isn't helping with this in any manner. He's the culmination of it, in fact. He thinks he's fear, but he's not, I am. Not everyone's scared of some rodent with wings."

She laughs at him.

"You're the only person I know who doesn't fear Batman."

"I'm on the contrary, fascinated by him. Fascinated by what he's done to this city. But obsessed? No, more amused, than obsessed."

She tilts her head so her hair hangs down over her eyes.

"I don't know what I'll do." He shrugs again. "I don't want to leave anymore though, everything is getting increasingly interesting. I suppose I'll get some money, buy a place, live there and watch and torment as I please."

She laughs between her teeth, a quiet laugh.

"You're so funny." She tells him.

Their food is brought to them.

"I'm gonna find Puddin'." She tells him.

"Shouldn't be too hard."

"No, no, no, he lays pretty low for the first weeks while he's planning. He's got a slight OCD when it comes to his plans. We have a rendezvous point though, a safe house of sorts, that's where I'll find him."

"Harleen, you're much more sane than the papers make you out to be."

"That's the problem."

They ate the rest of their burgers in a bit of awkward silence. People exchanged them odd looks as they passed. When they had finished and they'd paid the bill she looked at him and he nodded. She took out a gun from her bag, a big machine gun. She shot the ceiling and screamed at the top of her lungs for them to put the cash in the bag. They left quietly once that was over, and they left a very generous tip because they were very satisfied with their waiter.

They walked the night for about forty minutes, musing that perhaps Batman was following them, laughing at themselves.

She got to the apartment she was supposed to be at. He said he'd wait for her to tell him she was okay, and she nodded. She said she'd have to keep it secret because Joker would kill her if she knew she had brought him there.

It was five minutes when she came out screaming, saying he had been taken.


	3. Super Villains

The world needs fear. At the base of every relationship, from a person to a person, from a government to its people, from a country to another country, it all comes down to fear. Fear of being overtaken, fear of invasion, fear of destruction, fear of being left completely and utterly alone. Even the most base of relationships comes down to it. A child fears their parents' wrath, their parents not loving them. We are civilized through fear, we grow up with fear, and soon we breath it in like air, until we don't even notice it. Society builds around fear, people live off of it. It is the man who can control fear, who can control the world. And right at that moment, fear had been liquidized and was in a little vile in Jonathan Crane's breast pocket.

The entire body changes its chemistry when it is afraid. Muscles tense, breathing fastens, adrenaline and all shorts of chemicals get pumped into the body and the brain. The mind completely clenches and waits for it to be over. He remembers the fear he had of the tormentors in his life. He remembers the school bullies and thinks himself silly he allowed what they did to him to go on as long as it did. But then there were family fears, parental, authorities, all having the power to cut him off at any moment so that he may fall into the abyss he came from. He remembers that fear. He remembers stopping and breathing and overcoming that fear. He remembers how good it felt, when they hung him in that cornfield, to get down, and chase them through the night with that mask on his face.

Now he has guns in his face, mob bosses and gangsters all screaming in his face, but he has no fear. He smiles his little smile, because he knows he is unafraid. Where fear was, there's now but a morbid curiosity. He is liberated from the game all others are playing, he has no boss to be fired from, no wife to appease, no mother to submit to, there is no fear of disappointment. There is but his curiosity to fill. And oh, was Gotham filling it.

Then there was this girl. Romance, like fear, alters the brain, releasing all sorts of nasty chemicals. And when she's there, with her black lips and her curves poking through those costumes and corsets he feels the brain firing up. He hates it.

That girl has tears rolling down her cheeks, but she makes no noise. He stands in the dark, by the window, the room's a mess, an obvious attack, gun holes in the walls, blood on the floor. She's got a bag and she's stuffing it with everything she can find. He looks out the window and sees that Bat symbol glowing on the clouds.

"Harley…I think he's out there tonight."

"He's out there every night." She snaps.

She kicks down a closet door, and there hanging is a purple jacket. She grabs it from its hanger and sniffs the inside. She sighs.

"He never showers." She looks up.

Then she starts putting the jacket on.

"It doesn't match the red." John says, rather disappointed that she was beginning to take his appearance even more.

"That's not what I wanted anyway."

She pulls out a trunk from the closet, opening it up to reveal a gun and a silencer. She looks up at John, the light from the window seeping in onto his face. She puts the silencer on and turns back to the closet.

"Do you know how to shoot a gun?" She asks.

She fires down into the closet.

"Um, sure." He says.

She kicks down the lower bit of the wall, and pulls out an even bigger trunk.

"Come here."

He obeys almost without thinking, getting on his knees beside her.

"Do you know how to shoot a gun?" She asks again.

She opens the trunk, and its filled to the brim with black, shining, guns and bullets. He's taken aback, she grabs his wrists and shoves a heavy gun in his hand. He looks up at her, her eyes could shoot right through him like lasers. He starts to nod.

"Good." She says.

"Wait, we have to slow down."

"No, we don't, you just said he's out tonight."

"Yeah, but how do we even know what happened here? It's the Joker! He's probably fine."

She slams the trunk shut and stares up at him with those awful eyes again.

"Someone knew he was escaping, they were here, waiting for him. And if he had won, their bodies would be hanging in the bathroom over the bath tub, where he would be experimenting with some new drugs he's making." She said all in one breath. "Because they're not, I know he lost. And it's rare he loses, but he was probably still laughing from escaping, didn't notice the obvious signs before he walked in the door. If he was dead, the world would know by now." She shakes her head. "He's not dead."

"So, what? You're going to grab as many guns as you can, and find him?"

"Basically."

"That's…insane!"

She gets up, smoothly, those curves caressing the trunk, making the air around her hot, her blue eyes glowed in the dark. Her black lips curled up into a smile.

"I know!" She was excited. "This is what I have to do, John, I have to do something crazy! In this town, full of crazy people!"

He stared at her, his lens blocking his eyes. His mask was tucked beside the vile of fear in his breast pocket. He wanted to put it on then. He didn't want to disappoint her with his apprehension. Because she was like him. She was the only one there was like him. And she would never be his. She looked like him, in that moment, like the Joker. With her black lips like scars, her black eyes, and that purple coat draped over her. She looked like him.

"I have to find him." She told him again. "You don't have to help me."

"You and I are the only sane people in Gotham." He said. "We have to help each other."

Her insane smile went away, replaced by a sane one, fully comprehending the idea of friendship, the value of another person's life. She kicked the trunk then, started filling her bag with all the guns.

"You and me, Jono." She laughed through her teeth. "I thought I was done with friends."

"Me too."

She was loading every gun she put in her bag. He began watching her, and mimicking her, filling the guns at a much slower rate. He stood back for a moment and thought how silly this whole thing was. Here they were, two perfectly sane people, though she had clown make up on, and he wore a burlap sack every once and a while, and they were off to go save one of the cruelest criminals there were in the world. He wondered for a moment if he should help her, Joker after all had so much blood on his hands. But then he remembered how cruel people are, and how their kindness only comes in the face of greater cruelty. How the sacrifice of a few lives brings out the best in the remaining survivors. And how fear increases incredibly.

He valued human life very little, and felt every person in some way deserved to die. Even him, even her, even the Batman. In some little way they had done some damnable evil, and death was only inevitable. The tormentors he had through his life only supported his theories. Human suffering, human fear is the source of all good.

"We'll go through the crooks first, you can help with that, that's who you deal to. We'll go through them, because one of them is bound to know something from a friend of a friend, then we'll move up from there."

"Any theories right now?"

"Who knows? Every criminal in Gotham hates the Joker."

"And they fear him too."

"Fear should've protected him from this."

"There two reactions to fear. Cowering in the corner, and fighting back. Maybe someone finally decided to fight back."

She started emptying gas onto every surface of the room when they were done. He watched her in the dark, the bag heavy with lead. She wiped her hands on that purple coat and lit a match. They walked out back to an abandoned junk yard where they found a car she had the keys to. She took off her hat as she stepped into the driver's seat. The building was bright with fire, he watched it with some horrible enjoyment, and then she sped off.

He watched the city lights go by. He didn't ask where she was going, she seemed to know what to do and he didn't want to question her. She was already a more capable criminal than he, though she was learning from the best. He didn't want to become a criminal, at least, he didn't set out intending this to happen. He wanted money, he wanted experiment subjects, he wanted to know what fear was. Fame was not very important, perhaps that's why he wasn't very afraid when the police found him and dragged him off his horse and paramedics mended his face. He wasn't saddened by the loss of his career, merely frustrated that now it would all the more difficult to get subjects and his chemicals. Now he had a bag full of guns in his lap. He still wasn't afraid, that was the strange thing. He felt safe with Harley holding up the guns, all he had to do was support her.

His eyes wandered away from the lights back to her, with her beautiful eyes showing off what a mind her skull encased. She was like him, and that brought so much comfort. He suddenly became aware that once the Joker was found, she would leave him. He frowned at the thought, and suddenly became disgusted with her. He scoffed and turned away, unable to look at the thing that had convinced him to help her leave him.

She must've noticed because she began to speak.

"I read all your papers in college." She told him. "They were…enlightening. I was very sad to hear what had happened to you."

"Sad?"

"I thought you'd gone crazy. That was…before I understood madness. And I was sad."

"Why?"

"Because you seemed brilliant, and kind. To have that go to waste in a cell, I couldn't stand it. And then I wondered why you'd gone crazy, and I was very afraid it was your work in Gotham, since I was transferring there."

"My experiments pre-date Gotham by many years."

"I don't doubt it. It's just…good to be working with you, Dr. Crane."

She smiled with those black lips.

"Does Joker allow you friends?"

He saw through her attempt to distract him, change the subject. She stared out of the windshield for a long while before laughing.

"What do you want me to say, John?" She said.

"If he doesn't love you, then he should at least allow you the comfort of friends."

Her smile vanished, and she stared out to what was in front of them.

"John, shut up."

He looked away.

"I'm sorry." He said.

"You must be one lonely sicko, you know that? Latching onto a girl like me. You didn't have a mother, did you, Dr. Crane? Your father didn't give you any love, and you lacked any serious relationships all through out your life, didn't you?"

She was diagnosing him, showing him how easy it was for her. But then he knew what she feared.

"There's so many awful things I could conclude about you based off of your love for a complete and utter destructive psychopath who wears clown face and hobbies himself in killing people all for the attention of another psychopath who dresses up like a bat."

She grows quiet, like he knew she would. But then he looks back at her.

"But I don't. I refrain from judgment. Because I want you to be my friend."

"Don't you think this friend idea, is childish?"

"Are you calling me childish?"

He looks out the window.

"Sometimes I forget there's a world outside Gotham. The buildings block the view of the outside world. It is its own microcosm, where good and evil meet and match up, and we're all left in the middle. To figure it out on our own. There's a man out there, something awful happened to him, now he thinks he can destroy fear from this world by becoming it." He shakes his head. "And then there's your man, he uses it well, but I don't think he cares to understand it."

"You should write a book." She grins.

"Heh."

"Have you ever been in love, Dr. Crane?"

He looks at her.

"I thought so, once or twice."

"What happened?"

"If I was normal, a woman would have found me, and settled with me by now. I'd have a house, a job, a family with her. But I'm not normal, and it is rare to find someone to love in this unfortunate business."

She laughs.

"When did you stop trying?"

"The day I became unafraid."

"I love him, you know, I don't care what you make of it, just…know it. And I'm scared. I'm so scared for him."

"Stop the car."

"What?"

"Stop the car!"

She stops and he runs outside. She starts after him, fearing someone would see him. He runs into a park where he feels the bark of random trees, finding one he's looking for. He goes to his knees and begins digging.

"When it became apparent that I may be caught, when he started coming around, I began to plan for the day I'd leave a jail cell with nothing. I planted my plants around the city, I put extra formula and --"

He pulls out a nice little hand-held scythe from the ground. He hands it to her as he unearths a little box.

Back in the car he revealed it was a box full of his fear toxin. He unbuttoned his shirt, which made her look at him once or twice oddly. But he was refilling his canister which hid beneath his clothes.

"A scythe?" She finally asked.

"I grew up in farm country." He explained.

She laughed, thinking he was making a joke, but he looked at her oddly, which told her it was the truth.

"You. On a farm."

"Not on a farm, by a farm."

"That almost explains the scarecrow motif."

"Scarecrows scared me, and then someone made me one."

They drove into the slums of the city, the darkest of the dark corners, where Batman surely hid, where someone had taken her Joker. They had collected their weapons, they were ready. They parked in front of a bar first, where he knew that poker and hookers and drug dealers lived in its basement. She stopped the car and before he was able to put on his mask she grabbed his arm, and showed him a Clown mask typical of the Joker's crew.

"Put this on." She said.

"What? No." He was offended.

"Do it, so they won't know it's you."

"I want them to know it's me."

And so they made their grand entrance. She still wore his purple suit jacket, and he wearing his sack. She kicked the bouncer into the bar, where he fell to the floor. The bar grew silent as she walked in, her corset tight on her chest, her hat falling down to her fine shoulders. She held an oozy and a smaller gun with a silencer on it. She lifted both to her chest and smiled at everyone. He walked in behind her, silent, his footsteps not making a sound.

"What the fu--!?" Someone came at her.

He moved her out the way and shot fear into the man's eyes and lungs. He fell over and started screaming and spasm. John grabbed him and dragged him away from her, and went to the center of the room, so all of them could see the scared man and what John did to him. The man screamed and finally silenced himself, opting to grab John's leg and cry.

Harley started laughing.

"You're in trouble now, boys." She said. "You know you are when two super villains walk into your bar."

Super villains, he had never thought of it that way.

The bar was dimly lit, too dim for his tastes. A red glow shined in from the neon sign outside. It shined on Harley's skin, and made her look that much more frightening. Her heels made a clank with each of her steps.

"A few nights ago, my Puddin' escaped from Arkham. I know someone had a hit on him, and I know someone attacked him. I'm looking for that person, and I'm looking for Mister J." She said.

She seemed eerily comfortable talking to all these men, rapists, murderers, drug-addicts, pimps, everything. But she commanded that room. All the eyes were on her until the frightened man on John's leg started to grip too tight. He tried to kick the man off, stumbling as he did, looking rather silly. This broke the tension and the fear she had so eloquently been inducing. For John stumbled over, and fell as the crying man wouldn't let go of him.

Someone turned over a table over John, grabbed him and pulled him up by his jacket.

"Isn't this the drug-dealer who's been screwing us over?" The man asked with a grin.

"Hey!" Harley screamed.

"He's just a freak in a mask."

Someone took a swing at Harley, she dropped a gun. John kicked away and fell back to the ground, he rose to his feet and someone punched him in the face. He looked back and saw another punch coming his way, but then a bullet went through that man's head and he fell over dead.

"I'm going to ask you only ONE MORE TIME!" Harley screamed.

He was in the car, a bag of ice from the barman on his eye. She was driving to the next bar. She looked over and started laughing.

"Don't laugh at me." He said.

But she couldn't help it.

"Don't laugh at me!" He yelled.

She stopped and touched his arm.

"Hey, it's all right. No harm done. You know, except for that guy I shot."

She giggled but he didn't even look at her. His mask was at his feet in the car. He wasn't a super villain, he was a psychologist. He didn't fight, he drugged and observed. She pushed him into something he wasn't prepared for.

"Jono." She said. "You should know how to defend yourself. At least know how to throw a good punch. I can teach you. You know, if you want."

He didn't answer.

He just remembered all the other times he'd been punched in the face and all the times he'd put cold meat from the freezer on the wounds. He didn't look at her, he was embarrassed, ashamed. She had assumed he was something he wasn't. He had somehow failed her expectations.

"I'm sorry." He said.

"What? No need to be sorry!" She rubbed his back. "You live, you learn, right?"

He remembers the last girl he disappointed. Back in the classroom when everyone was telling her want an awful waste of skin he was. Then she left him in a cornfield, hung to a stick like a scarecrow.

The next bar he just stood by her as she maimed and destroyed with ease, and he enjoyed watching the fear in people's eyes. She brought down a man twice as big as her, and planted him on the ground. She broke a finger.

"I have just broken this man's finger. Where is the Joker?"

Then she broke the rest of the fingers, one by one.

They continued the process for several hours. They followed lead after lead, finally getting rumors that began to grow into common knowledge. There was rumors of a heated dispute between a few friends on what to do with the Joker, how to punish him for making fools of everyone else. She went on, breaking bones, becoming the seductive monster that men feared. He couldn't take his eyes off of her sometimes, when she had a man by his hair, pushed him to his knees and put a gun to his head. She was a warrior fighting for her lover that wasn't even really her lover. A man she loved so dearly and he didn't care about her one bit.

"Does he ever tell you how pretty you are?"

And finally she had a big mob boss on his back, a gun to his throat, and one of his bodyguards was running around, screaming about spiders that were coming out of his mouth. John stood and watched as she pressed it deeper in his throat and he finally coughed out a name.

"Nigma."

Edward Nigma, The Riddler, a deranged man with a huge ego, a need for attention and a sick pleasure in riddles. Harley scoffed.

"Oh, that trash." Is all she said.

She walked out of the bar and he followed closely. The dawn was breaking. Batman was gone, and so were they. He bought a cheap motel room for them because Harley said "he had a friendlier face," and it seemed she was right. It was a cheap overnight place, it cost only seventy dollars which was actually most of what they had stolen. He was apologizing because the only room they had available was a one bedroom, with on queen size bed. This didn't seem to bother her, for she looked back over her shoulder and told him they'd just have to share the bed then.

For some reason this startled him briefly. She didn't mind sleeping beside him because she knew if he tried anything she'd break something of his. He wished she was more bashful and almost hoped she'd change her mind and make him sleep on the floor. But she didn't, and the bed was comfy. They would sleep for the day, and continue that evening. They'd wake and order room service then leave like nothing ever happened.

She took a shower before him, and he watched the news as it began to talk about their recent escape and escapades. Later around eight am they were both sound asleep to each side of the bed. Though he didn't sleep well, as he never did in beds that were not his own. He flipped over and woke up and saw her beautiful blonde hair covering the pillows and comforter. Then she turned over and slept some more, and so did he.


	4. He Deserves It

"No, your thumb goes here, if you punch somebody like that, you'll break your fingers."

When he was younger, back in high school, where out of fear kids seem to fight each other. Everyone always fears the Other, the person opposite you, staring, a mind that you have no power over, no control. They stare at you, and can judge you, and hate you. It's this people fear, and high school students fear most. The Other will always have power by a simple glance, to destroy the Other, physical force is taken. And so when Jonathan Crane watched the other kids, just out of an inability to speak to them, they attacked him. He had always been called Scarecrow, he was always tall for his age, always as thin as a stick. Despite being worked to death by a grandparent, his frame never built any muscle. And so they'd yell scarecrow, and they'd use their fists to make him stop staring.

"Now you, see, you sort of curve your arm. Don't! Don't stretch your arm all the way out, keep your elbow bent at least a little, or you'll break your arm."

And there was a girl, a year older than him, who had an appreciation for literature, and a great love for Shakespeare. One day in the Library they found each other. He had gotten a book she wanted, and he managed to tell her that he was willing for her to take it. It was "Hamlet."

"No, don't do that." Harley's laughing.

She takes his tiny fist in her soft hands, putting his thumb back where it should be. She smiles as she does it, smiles this really beautiful smile. It has an infectious nature, and he finds himself smiling.

"I'm starting to think you're not doing this right on purpose, Jono."

So the girl, in all her infinite wisdom, told him that they should go have lunch and decide on Hamlet's fate after lunch. He thinks back to her, and wonders why on Earth she would have made such a bold move. He was supposed to be home to clean the bedrooms, and he had worked hard to fit time to go to the Library, and his grandmother was going to scold him and make him say his prayers, but when she asked him, he said yes.

"You're the psychologist, right?" She asked him as she munched so carefully on a sandwich. "That's what the others say you're gonna be."

"I wasn't aware others said anything about me."

"Well, yeah, they say you're gonna be a psychologist, and that you're a little weird."

"I don't mean to be."

"My original point was, as a psychologist, do you believe Hamlet's antic disposition is an act, or is it sincere? Was he just acting crazy, or did he really go insane?"

"Don't you know?"

"Well, I have my opinion, but I'd like to hear yours."

"Oh."

She stared at him waiting for him to speak, but he didn't really understand, as no one had cared for his opinion before. She had to nudge him, and laugh at him to get him to speak.

"I believe, Hamlet, was merely acting. I think it's very difficult to become insane, and nearly impossible when you intentionally want to become insane."

"I don't think Hamlet wanted to become insane."

"Well, I meant, he was willingly taking on this…new identity. But it's strange, as he's acting, he is able to truly express himself. Able to mock others in words they don't understand, able to make the King afraid of him."

"Afraid?"

"The King feared Hamlet, feared that perhaps it was all an act. And somehow he knew. That's the key to fear. It's knowing people as they really are."

"Huh."

She smiles at him, like Harley does now. They finished their lunch and he went home where his grandmother scolded him and made him do his prayers and made him go to bed with no supper. A boy, nearly a man, sent to bed with no supper still at his age.

But the others saw him with her that day at lunch. And they followed him passed the scarecrow down the road that led to his home. And they used their fists because it was all they could think of to use. Because somehow they had deemed that he was unworthy of this girl who had asked him for lunch in the first place.

He's looking in the mirror then as Harley watches him from the bed. He looks at the familiar black eye staring back at him.

"Does it hurt? I could go get some ice." She says.

"No, no, it's fine. Nothing a mask can't hide."

She looks to the drawer where the face of Scarecrow hangs, and her hate beside it.

"Where'd you come up with that, John?" She asks.

He looks at her, unwilling to speak, but she bites her lips.

"Come on, I'll tell you if you tell me."

"Some kids, they decided it'd be funny one day to tie me to a stick like some kind of scarecrow." He tells her as he starts to straighten his cuffs and tie.

He looks up, expecting her to go.

"Oh. Well, I uh, this is embarrassing, it was just this thing I saw at a costume shop, and I liked it." She laughs at herself.

"And then you wear his face."

"Yes. I do."

She gets up suddenly, reminded of the hard facts of the day. She was a morning person and she always got up early but was slow in getting her day started. She lingered with John in that room, talking, endlessly, and needlessly, almost foolishly. But she stood and she planned out the day.

"We'll find him today." She says. "A few days missing, but today we'll find him. Nigma, we'll find him, and there will be Mister J, not too roughed up, and I'll grab him the moment I see him."

He watches her from the bathroom, finishing his tie.

"Why do you love him?"

"Because, he made me free. And I will become insane for him."

"You and I are just acting on antic dispositions. But you, you want to become insane, truly?"

"Yes. It's the only way to be like him. It's the only way he'll see me."

"If you become insane, I'll be the only sane one left in Gotham."

"You don't think I can do it."

"I don't want you to do it."

"Come on, John, you know you want it too."

He looks away.

"I see the Madman's Wisdom, and I do my best to live by it, but to lose my reason, my insight. I don't know."

"You'll lose nothing of worth, the Madman's mind is worth a hundred reasonable men's."

She turns back to him, frowning.

"Lets not fight. Lets get back on talking. How about this? Who was the first person you ever killed?" She asks.

He stares.

"Okay, I'll go first. A guard, he was about to shoot him."

He straightens his glasses and looks at her.

"My grandmother, when I left for college. Then I tried to kill my mother, who handed me over to the damn woman in the first place."

Harley stares.

"But you didn't…?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Batman stopped me."

She looked up at him and for the first time felt their difference in age and experience. She had lived a happy life before all this. But there, trying to boast, she was standing in front of man who deserved the gift of madness. He deserved to be free from the burden his memories gave him, free of caring what others think, free of caring about anything at all. And she sat there talking about wanting to be insane when her only reason for it was because someone didn't really love her as she was, someone she knew she shouldn't be with in the first place. She felt embarrassed, she felt ashamed, she was blushing and looking away.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know." She says.

"You were never teased in school were you?"

She looks up.

"No. Look at you. All your life you have been given all you want. You may have worked some, seen things as if the world were against you. But you are a beautiful, young, smart woman. And you know you could have anything you want. But you've found yourself wanting the one thing that you can't. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?"

"I'm not afraid of anything, Harley. I don't fear other people, what they think, what they'll do to me, I don't fear death, I'm completely free. I am me, as I am, and I will always be that. But you. You're still waiting for something to happen to you. You have so much fear. You're afraid of him, afraid of him leaving you, afraid of not being able to ever be what you must be in order for him to maybe love you back."

She stares at him, a hard and constant stare. If she didn't blink, she knew she wouldn't cry. And she didn't, even as the water began to collect in her eyes, she didn't cry. She just stared up at him.

"But don't you get lonely?"

"Of course I do. But I'm not afraid of being lonely. I don't mind it."

"You don't ever want to find someone to be with?"

"If it happens, then it will happen. But I gave up on such ambitions, I'm not going to actively seek out something I can do without."

"You don't want someone to love you?"

"I love me."

She couldn't wrap her head around it. She was incapable of it. She had become dependent on the idea of romantic love, of the merging of two people, and she was willing to give up everything to achieve this, everything. She could not live with herself, all the things she's done, all the blood on her hands. She couldn't live with herself without the thought that it was all worth something, and maybe the Joker was right about the world.

She saw why he was the renowned psychologist, and she was the one trying to make a name for herself.

"See? You've lost control of the situation, of our conversation, of us, and you're afraid." He told her.

"Yeah? Well. You punch like a girl." She smiled.

They dumped their current car for one that Harley hijacked. She was driving at the moment and the sun was going down, it was almost time for work to begin. He looked at her differently then, she was still beautiful and smart, but there was a certain tragedy to her as well. She was young, that was her flaw. She was a young woman who seemed so unnatural shooting up bars and breaking limbs. He belonged in this city, he knew that, he came here prepared, he was already a killer before Gotham. But Harley had lived her life without such scars, she came to Gotham, and Gotham made her a killer. It all seemed so, misplaced.

But as they drove to Nigma, she started crying. He went to place his hand on her shoulder.

"Don't touch me." she said.

And he didn't. He stared at the window until nightfall, and she kept on crying.

When they got to Nigma's she was fine. His place was fairly well known, the egomaniac he was did a good job advertising his whereabouts and his schemes. Edward Nigma loved riddles, but he loved attention far more. His acts of crime where cries of attention, the more the merrier, and that's why he'd call news stations and newspapers and random people to tell them when something was going to happen. It was an abandoned storage warehouse by the bay.

He followed her closely, his mask covering everything it needed to, in his hand he brought his little scythe.

Two guards blocked their entrance, and when they saw the two of them emerging out of the dark they straightened up, afraid and surprised anyone was bothering to come by there. She was going to walk right passed them, but one of them grabbed her shoulder. She grabbed his wrist and broke it, and looked at the other one, who backed away. John applauded her efficiency.

When they got in it was mostly empty. Apart from the giant television on the other side with giant couches surrounding that TV. A stereo blasted music as loud as it could from an ipod track list, lights made the void look more like a rave than anything else. And there Nigma sat, playing some war game on Xbox live with complete strangers, yelling riddles into the mic.

She lifted up her gun, and fired into the ceiling.

He jumped out the his chair, and John couldn't help but chuckle. But Harley was in no mood to laugh.

"WHERE IS HE!?" She screamed, her voice grower louder than the stereo.

"WHAT!?" Edward Nigma yelled.

She shot the stereo, silencing it.

"Where is he?"

Nigma stood on his couch looking back at them. He had on a green blazer and purple pants with a big question mark belt buckle. He stared for a moment then grinned.

"Well, well, well, what's red, and black, and really pissed off?" He laughed at her.

She lifted her gun and fired at him. But he jumped out of the way behind the couch, he grabbed his cane and jumped out from the couch. He ran at her, rolling out the way of bullets, and then jumping up and slamming his cane in her head.

"HAH!" he grinned.

He swung at John then, but John backed away, he kicked for John's head, and John ducked. He sliced for the stomach, and John jumped back. Finally, he slammed down Nigma's cane with his scythe. He put his wrist to his face and released that fear toxin. Nigma jumped back and spun the toxin away with his cane. John knew how to fight bullies, he backed away and allowed Nigma to attack. He blocked the cane once more. It stopped the cane and Harley came up from behind him with a kick to his neck.

He fell over quickly and started coughing. Harley put him between her legs and kicked his cane away. She cocked the gun and put it this temple. John put his hand on her shoulder.

"Where is he?"

He coughed up something from his throat before looking over at her through his mask.

"Who?" He asks.

"You know who! The Joker!"

"Your boyfriend?"

"YES!!!"

She fired the gun. Even John jumped. And there beside Nigma's nose was a hole in the ground where the bullet fell. He stared at it for a moment, and smelled the smoke.

"You crazy bitch!" Nigma yelled.

She pressed the gun on his temple again.

"I don't know!" He screamed.

"Harley…"

"I don't know, god damn it!"

"You're lying."

"I don't know!"

"Harley!"

John gripped her shoulder, and she looked up at him, tears in her eyes. Nigma crawled away from her in a rush, she lifted the gun so it followed him. He sat up and put up his hands.

"Look. I don't know anything about the Joker. I stay away from him, everyone does." Nigma said.

"He escaped Arkham a few days ago. We have sources that say you have something to do with his missing." John said.

Nigma stared for a moment.

"You're such a poser." Harley shook her head.

"Excuse me?" Nigma sat up.

"You're nothing, Nigma. You're just a guy with an attention problem, and you yell and scream so much you've got everyone convinced you're crazy. You're not crazy. You're a genius. A loud, obnoxious, unoriginal, genius."

"…Unoriginal?"

"Where'd you get purple and green from, loser!?"

She lifts the gun again and John lowers it.

"Just answer the question, Nigma." He tells Edward.

"I just noticed, what are you two doing together? Does 'Mistah J' know?"

They stare at him.

"Hurm, what could bring you two together? Hang on, give me a minute, I'm real good at these." He puts his chin to his hand and thinks.

"He's not lying, Joker's not here." John tells her.

"He knows something, look at that slimely smile." She points the gun. "What do you know, Riddler?"

His grin grows.

"I like that, calling me 'Riddler,'" he sighs "The clown prince of crime is with his two best friends."

"Batman and who?"

Riddler grins, picking up his cane. He starts brushing himself off, grinning a stupid grin.

"Batman and who?" Harley repeated.

John looked at her, she suddenly looked like she was going to cry again. There was the answer and she couldn't figure it out. But he could.

"Harvey Dent." John said.

"Huh?" She looks up.

Riddler starts laughing.

"If it was Batman, he would've said 'lover.'" John explains.

"It's true, everyone knows what a crush your boyfriend has on the Bat." Riddler chimes in.

"Harvey Dent, Two-face." John tells her.

She smiles and grabs John, hugging him, jumping up down, so very happy.

"Let's go! We can still find him!"

She turned on her heel and began running for the door, as if all the anger for the Riddler had escaped her, replaced only by her new target. John lingered for a moment, holding out his arms for her hug that had passed him by. He turned and watched her exit the warehouse.

Riddler was still laughing.

"So, you and Harley, huh?" He grinned. "I saw that. I saw what you did there. Here's a good one, just for you, Scarecrow. How does a guy like you, get a girl like her?"

The doors were suddenly shut.

"The answer is, you don't."

And Riddler's cane was hit into the back of Jonathan Crane's head.

-------

I always thought of the Riddler as just being a crazy-attention-whore. A genius, a guy who knows he's smarter than you, and knows he can get out of any situation. He's cocky, but he's also insane. And being insane he loves to have fun. So I imagined him screaming riddles into the mic as he played Halo 3 or something. But that's just me.


	5. I Am Fear

Back home with the fearful kids, and the tormenting grandmother, there were endless golden fields that were home to a scarecrow. No one was really sure who put the scarecrow there, and there was that rumor that most little towns have, that it had always been there. It was on no real property, it protected no real crops, and the crows weren't afraid of it. The rumor went on that it was alive, that when you didn't look, it got up and moved. That it dragged people into the cornfield, took their skin, to replace his own since the crows pecked at him.

He had to pass this Scarecrow every day to get home, and it loomed over him, staring down at him, the sun silhouetting the figure, the sun acting like a halo. He knew stories were merely stories, he knew that they had been perpetuated only to cause fear, yet the figure stood tall and strong, through the rainy winters and the windy autumns, it was always there.

One day the others saw him and the girl having lunch, discussing Hamlet. This was a threat to the standing order of things, Jonathan Crane could not have a girlfriend, this was a rule of the way things were. Jonathan Crane was a creep, was a nerd, was a lonely little thing they hurt. So they talked to the girl, they told her nasty things about him, and she became too afraid to talk to John anymore. And then they planned an even more awful plan.

It was Halloween. The kids dressed up and went out for candy, the teenagers had their parties and ran around being generally destructive. By then she hadn't spoken to John in over two months, and he had accepted her as a loss. Because of his grandmother and her beliefs, John never celebrated Halloween. And on that night he was merely walking home late from a day at the library. It was on his way home that he noticed the scarecrow had moved. The night was silent and cold, and after a moment he kept walking, unaware of those who were following him. The kids jumped him, punched him, grabbed and started dragging him into the cornfield.

"Did you get the clothes?"

"Some of these are my dead grandpa's, be careful."

They stripped him to his boxers and he tried to crawl away when they were talking, but they stomped a foot on his back that crushed a few ribs. They dragged him further into the cornfield, where no on from the street would be able to hear him crying out. They dressed him up in new clothes, and he saw a big cross in the dirt waiting for him. By then he had stopped struggling and thought perhaps to let them go through with their prank, just so it'd be over. They sat him up and he saw her. The girl who spoke to him about Shakespeare, the only girl who had ever bothered to speak to him. She stared at him with fearful eyes, she knew what she was doing was wrong, but she was too afraid to not do it.

And then they tied him to the cross by his arms and waist and legs. He was stuck there on the cross, like a scarecrow. His glasses fell to the ground and they and the rest of the world became just a big blur. They were laughing as they put a hat to finish off everything. They waited below him, waiting for him to beg, to scream or cry, but he merely stared back at them. He thinks they got bored and walked away, leaving him there to be picked up in the morning.

Only when they were gone did he start moving. His arms were sticks and they uselessly fought against the rope. He tired himself out rather quickly trying to squirm his way out. It was in the following silence that he noticed the strange noises that the cornfield made. The corn brushed up against each other in the wind, forming images in the dark, dark blurs that moved, that were alive. The crows were crying out in the night and he remembered his grandmother's crows, and then he remembered his grandmother and how she was going to whip him when he got home. He started breathing faster. It was getting cold and he started to imagine himself a dead cold corpse just hanging there in the sun the next morning. Fear started to take a hold of him, and he thought that perhaps he was going to die there, and crows were going to be eating him the next morning. That the creatures in the dark, the monsters in the shadows of the corn were going to get him. That he'd be found and no one would care.

He started to shake his arm, trying to slip through the rope. He was scared, too scared to do nothing. He didn't want to die, not there, not because of them. It took him an hour, and by the end of it his shoulder blade was bruised, his shoulder was torn up, and his wrist was bleeding, but he got one arm free. Just then the stick he had been tied to broke in half and he fell to the ground. At least there he could grab his glasses and see what he was doing. He must've been a mile from the road, too far to crawl, and he could've gone in the wrong direction anyway.

Strangely enough, there was a little hand held scythe within reach that they had not seen or they had forgotten. With his free hand he was able to cut the rest of the rope. He ran through the cornfield, ran as he could, faster than the dark could go, faster than the wind could blow. He started to feel arms in the corn, started to feel the wind grabbing at his back, the dark dragging him back inside. He looked back having felt something brush up against him, and then he ran into the scarecrow.

He fell back to the ground and looked up to see it staring at him, he screamed and no one heard. No one but the scarecrow. The wind made it move, the wind gave it life and it reached out its hand to him. It fell over then, finally falling away from the stick that had held it up all these years. It fell limp, into his arms, dead, finally dead, as if it had waited all its life for him to be there. He threw it to the ground and saw its face. A burlap sac, sewn together from bits and pieces, it had eyes, and a mouth, a face.

He wasn't afraid anymore.

He knew what he was going to do.

He took the face and made it his own, and he went home and grabbed a large scythe, and ran away before his grandmother knew.

After they had put him on that stick the kids had left for a party at a friends. There they were getting drunk and trying to get their clothes off. They were laughing, laughing at him, what they had done to him. Then suddenly the lights went out, the music went away, the tv turned off, and they were all alone in the dark. He had broken the cable box, cutting off the electricity. He now understood them, understood what control them, understood how they had controlled him. It was fear, it all came down to fear, and he knew how to get back at them.

They stayed relatively calm, it was just the lights, someone would have to go check the cable box. They must've blown a fuse, nothing big. But the first person they sent out to the box never came back. That's when the worry started to settle in. He went to the windows and started hitting the scythe against the glass, people could hear the little bangs through out the house, it was nothing they told themselves. But then he scraped the blade on the glass, and someone screamed. He climbed to the second story window, which he saw was open. Someone was trying to have sex for the first time in the next bedroom, while the others downstairs were looking for the kid who had disappeared he snuck inside the bedroom. The couple inside didn't notice, for the guy was too busy holding the girl, telling her it was going to be okay, and the girl was too busy hiding under the covers. He walked with ease inside the closet, the girl jumped and looked around. What, the guy asked her. He started to slowly open the closet, and she saw his eyes glowing in the dark, and she screamed.

The downstairs heard her, and jumped. The guy ran out of the room, leaving the girl in the bed, too terrified to move herself. He ran downstairs in his underwear.

"It's the Scarecrow! It's the god damn Scarecrow!" He yelled at them.

They grabbed him, tried to calm him down, but he was trying to get to the front door, screaming that it was the scarecrow from the cornfield.

Meanwhile John stared at the girl in the bed too terrified to move, and he slowly lifted his scythe, and sliced it down on the bed in between her legs. She screamed, but she never came out of that bedroom.

"What was that!?" Someone was screaming from downstairs.

"It's the Scarecrow!" The guy was still yelling. "The Scarecrow!"

"That's ridiculous, stop it, the lights are out, and we --"

"LOOK!"

There he stood at the top of the stairs. The tall six foot scarecrow with a scythe and that awful mask. He stood unmoving like the one in the cornfield. Then the room erupted, people were screaming, jumping over couches and each other to get away. Only a couple, the bullies, the jocks who hated him had the courage to grab a baseball bat and go after him. That's when he started to laugh and turn away and run upstairs.

He jumped out of the window he had came up in, so they didn't find him upstairs. The girls ran to the front door, which he had blocked with a tree branch so they couldn't even open the door. He went inside through the back door, into the kitchen where a girl ran on her own. She screamed and everyone else grew silent. The bullies came back down.

"It's not up there!" They yelled.

"NO!" he yelled.

They turned to see he had the girl by the hair, she had fainted out of fear and he was dragging her along.

"I'M RIGHT HERE."

He screamed through his throat, his voice coming out deep and monstrous, disguised.

The room screamed, he raised his scythe and sliced down on the couch, cutting between two girls. The bullies chased after him and he ran to the back of the house where he hid into the dark and seemed to disappear. His scythe emerged from the dark, and stabbed one of them in the shoulder, ever so slightly. After that they ran out the back door, into the backyard, dragging their friend with him. He snuck back to the front where everyone was screaming.

"YOU DON'T GET IT." He told them. "YOU CAN'T HURT ME."

He sliced through the air.

"I AM FEAR."

Finally someone broke a window and everyone started running outside. Everyone was screaming, running. They'd get the neighbors, they'd get the police, but he'd be gone far before then. There he stood on the couch he had destroyed, where below him the girl, the girl who spoke to him sat beneath him. She looked up at him, tears in her eyes.

"…John?"

He grabbed her by the neck.

"No. Scarecrow."

----------

We'll return to our regularly scheduled story next time.


End file.
